Felix walked around looking into each sarcophagus and inspecting each experiment. There were far fewer experiments in the room than there were entries in the book. Apparently, Erolan had removed and replaced some the experiments over time. Not all of the sarcophagi contained corpses, some of them contained items. Notably, there was a suit of armor and an large great axe. The armor looked like your standard affair, steel plate armor. Felix mentally pulled up his scan of Erolan's experiment log and read through the entries pertaining to the armor.

12: The Armor.

What I thought was and what identifies as standard plate armor, is in fact one of the oddest magical artifacts I have ever encountered. I originally found this plate armor as it fell out of the body of a king when they died. Testing the armor on a living test subject, it appears the armor will implant itself within it's wielder's skin. This process is not instant, but rather takes almost a year. The metal gradually warps and grows until it is skin tight then it will morph with the wearer's skin and become undetectable. While it does make the wielder more durable, the durability is not a large amount. Attempting to equip any other armor on top of it will result in 12 shredding it to pieces, even high level enchanted armor. I know not what other benefits the armor might provide as none of my test subjects were able to identify anything about it, even after years of wearing it.

While I am tempted to equip the armor myself, the fact that it seems to be impossible to remove once equipped has stopped me.

Any attempts to damage the armor have resulted in it simply restoring itself within the span of less than a day. I am also unable to devour whatever soul is implanted within the armor. This armor will remain in experiment container 12 as I feel like it's true value may be revealed in the future.

Grim spoke up, mentally, I guess he never found the true value.

Any ideas?

Not a clue. Never heard of anything like it.

Felix walked over to the axe and flipped to it's page in his mental copy of the experiment log.

43: The Axe.

1: This axe was wielded by the champion of an empire. In the battle I had mostly avoided him, instead letting my pets deal with him. However, having found the axe, having seen a glimpse of it, I wish I had battled them myself. I ended up devouring their soul from afar just after they unleashed it's abilities.

The axe seems to be unwilling to soul bond to me or any of my subjects so it is difficult for me to ascertain any of it's properties. Identify is as always, unhelpful. I have tried devouring the axe but it did not appear to have any effect whatsoever.

2: I have taken on a new apprentice, a young farming girl. It seems as though the axe is willing to bond with her as it responded immediately to her presence. I have given her the axe and instructed her on how to bond with it but she seems to be unable to do so. Maybe the axe requires time to accept it's host? At least it doesn't fight her when she wields it.

3: The axe seems to have accepted her as it's master as it has accepted the soul bond. It's properties are simply that it can be summoned to her hand at will so long as it is within a reasonable distance and in the same universe. I suspect it may have other hidden properties as well because when she wields it, it appears completely different to how I had originally encountered it.

4: Unfortunately, my apprentice did not last and the axe reverted to it's base form upon her death. Having consumed her soul, the bond does not appear to have transferred to me. The axe will remain here, in container 43 for further experimentation and in the hopes that I may find someone to wield it in the future.

Felix looked into the container and visually inspected the axe. The blade was a simple curved blade on both sides, perfectly symmetrical. The blade itself was a sharp looking chrome with a black coating between the sharpened edges. In total it was about 2 meters in length with a long leather wrapped shaft. It looked a little too big to Felix, bigger than any melee weapon he had ever seen, but then again, people were much stronger in the multiverse and their strength was only going up.

Didn't realize items could refuse to bond with someone.

If your convictions don't align it just won't. Smarter items, like me, can make intelligent decisions.

You mean dumb items it's a binary that will never change, smart ones you may need to convince?

Sort of.

How do you convince it?

Most commonly, either have convictions it likes or do things it agrees with. If it is particularly smart though, who knows. It could literally be looking for anything. How do you convince someone to marry you or even just trust you?

Right but is it sentient? Like would it talk to me?

There is a huge chasm between language and intelligence. You don't need to be able to communicate with a language to have intelligent thought. Nova doesn't speak with you, you still communicate.

I guess. Any risk if I take it?

Yes, there is always a risk. As for if it's worth the risk, I would take it.

Felix looked down at the sarcophagi and tried to figure out how to open it. There were no handles or buttons he could find and the glass was almost perfectly flush with the top edge of the stone. There was a slight gap between the stone and the glass though. He thought about casting a force spell underneath the glass to lift it but Felix wanted to give something else a try first. He pulled out his staff and reached into it with his soul, carefully shaping one end into a flat edge that bent slightly.

Using his makeshift crowbar, he wedged the end in between the glass and the stone then reached up and pulled on the other end. Using a crowbar, especially one of this length, made it very easy, but the glass pane was still ridiculously heavy. As Felix lifted the glass he made sure not to put his fingers under it and instead pushed his staff into the gap. He then pushed down on the staff to lift the pane into the air and reached into the container. Felix tentatively reached for the axe but it didn't seem to react at all so he wrapped his hand around the shaft and stowed it in his inventory.

Felix carefully lowered the glass and pulled his staff free. He decided to leave the end as a crowbar because he figured he might need it at some point soon.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

So Grim, these corpses, the other experiments…

Yeah, you are one lucky son of a bitch.

Yeah… Erolan's body?

That's riskier and hard to do considering he's alive but… I think you can probably get away with it if you're careful.

Any risk to me putting them in my soul space? What if some of them are still alive?

You can't put anything that's alive in your soul space unless they agree to it.

What about… when we were talking about soul harvesting…

If they're on the brink of death, you can sometimes force the issue. Unfortunately, if Erolan is constantly resurrecting himself, he's not ever really going to be on the brink of death.

Is it possible to actually kill him?

Of course, nothing is immortal.

Do you know how?

It seems like he bound a large chunk of his soul to each of the three items that were sealed away. Enough that if he dies, his soul is still bound together so he can simply stick around. At that point, he can force his body to restore itself from a single living cell. You would have to destroy one or more of the magic items or forcefully detach them from his soul.

How do I do that?

No idea.

Oh shit. To destroy one, I'd have to unseal it too…

Yup.

Think the chains would be able to hold him?

Hell no.

Damn. Is it even possible to destroy a magic item like that?

Yeah… I don't know how you could though. It usually involves throwing it into a star or a black hole.

Holy shit, really?

Yeah, it's major overkill but if you need to destroy a magic item, overkill is usually what you want.

That's only for soul bound items right?

Yeah maybe system fuckery enchantments too. You can get pretty close to that with your form of enchantmenting, but you'll need what are probably considered S+ grade materials.

Alright. So unsealing Erolan is out of the picture.

Unless you're trying to commit suicide.

What if I take the seals with me and then break them open once the world event is over. Will this place even exist anymore?

It's possible that could work. Issue is, the items will take a long time to reset and unbind so you wouldn't even be able to use them if it did. Unless it kills Erolan but I doubt that. It's also possible the instant you remove one of the items, Erolan's soul comes sling shotting across the multiverse to you, where he possesses a body and hunts you down.

Uh… Alright, leaving him be.

Felix then walked to each and every one of the experiments, making sure to write down which number they were with a picture in his mind, and looted every single corpse. He placed them all in his soul space, rather than his inventory. He was initially worried some of them might be alive but none of them were. He was worried because he didn't know how else the bodies had survived this long without rotting but he figured it out with the first sarcophagi he opened that held a body.

The containers each had enchantments to freeze their contents, powered by whatever mana source the city was using. On the axe, it simply wasn't enabled as it wasn't necessary. Felix was also hesitant to loot the armor, but he decided to do so anyways, just carefully. He completely removed the glass pane and used his cloak to lift the armor, ensuring he didn't make skin to skin contact with it. He stowed the armor in his inventory and made a mental note to be careful whenever he pulled it back out.

With all of that complete, Felix decided to leave Erolan's body be. He already had a memory from when he had first inspected it and from when he read the note. Without placing the corpse in his soul space, he wasn't going to be able to inspect it any closer, since that wasn't possible, the memory would have to do. Felix inspected the rest of the experiment room and inner chamber but didn't find anything of particular interest so he decided to head up to the city.

He knew there had to be a way for Erolan to get from this room to the city and vice versa, he just had to find it. Felix's best bet was the experiment chamber in the middle which seemed to span all the way up to the ceiling for some reason. Felix looked up from inside the experiment room but it was completely dark. He flew upwards with his light as far ahead of him as he could to warn him of any creatures that might have been lurking.

The top of the shaft was a simple metal plate so Felix simply pushed up on it but it wouldn't budge. He inspected the entire plate but found no indication of how to open it. Felix's last hope before hitting it with spells was to reach out with his mana senses into the surrounding material. It took him a few minutes as the enchantment had been dormant for at least a few thousand years. It had long since filled itself with ambient mana and simply sat dormant ever since.

Mana conductive materials though, even if they were filled with ambient mana, warped the ambient around them as it passed in and out of it. Felix just barely managed to detect it but the amount of mana the enchantment stored was miniscule, if it did open the trap door, it was powered by something else. Luckily for Felix, it wasn't very far away so he simply reached towards it and pulled on the ambient mana. The mana flowed through the enchantment and Felix heard something click as the trapdoor popped up just a few degrees.

This time, Felix pushed on the trap door and it easily opened. Felix looked around and found himself in what appeared to be a home, more of a mansion really but the furniture was an odd sight considering it was all pristine. Felix set himself down on the floor and closed the trap door which made a faint click as soon as it was flush with the floor. Looking down, if Felix hadn't just come through it, he never would have known there was a trap door there. The floor was covered with an intricate pattern of tiles that completely masked the seams and hid the secret passage.

Looking around the home, it was like a modern mansion. The furniture was clean and minimal, there wasn't a single wall in the entire home and the roof was a single giant pane of glass. Looking up, there were four triangular stones that were slightly open. As soon as Felix saw them, he recognized the building from when he had scouted the city.

From the outside, the building looked like a pyramid where the top had been opened up, each of the four triangles splitting away from the center. That sat on top of a small squared off base that Felix now knew, contained the actual home. While none of the furniture had been damaged by the passage of time, some of it had been clearly used and tossed around likely when the hand had battled Erolan here on his first resurrection.

Felix did a quick search of the house but suspected Erolan would have hidden any treasures in his experiment room instead. After finding nothing of particular interest, Felix found the door and left the building. Outside of the building was an oddly well maintained garden or park. The entire rest of the platform, that hid Erolan's experiment room beneath, was covered in a soft grass with flowers and trees everywhere. Felix walked around and quickly figured out why it appeared so well maintained after so many years, there was a gardener.

[D] Devoured (Lvl 113)

The Devoured seemed completely unfazed by Felix's appearance and was in the process of picking up fallen leaves. A few meters to his left, under the canopy of what appeared to be a large oak tree, were four vertical stones placed in a line. Felix could just make out the crude carvings on each of them from where he was standing. They read in order, Branock, Varen, Shyreth, Rey. The graves seemed to be the only thing out of place in the entire garden as the grass was cut, there were no weeds in sight and the fallen leaves and petals were currently being collected. Event the trees were planted in specific locations so that there were a couple of paths you could follow around the garden. It was a rather impressive sight, though not one that Felix expected to be hiding any kinds of treasures. He could start grave robbing, the deceased bodies of the hand likely still had their gear on them, but the idea kind of turned Felix off so he decided against it.

Felix instead walked to the south edge of the platform he was on and looked towards the gates of the first wall in the distance. The gates now hung open on their hinges and Felix spotted a couple of people walking through them, one in and one out. He looked around the city and spotted a couple of people running through the streets but most of the city was obscured by buildings. He did manage to spot a ton of Devoured nestled amongst the city. They were scattered everywhere and Felix was certain there were many more hidden within the buildings themselves. There were even some flying Devoured, though they were a much lower level than those Felix had encountered under the city. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .